Month: June 2002

Finally saw Attack of the Clones yesterday with my lady.

Late, I know, but we had the opportunity to do so at one of the few digitial projection theatres, and so waited until we had the time to schlep over to it (it is not quite our local theatre).

So we saw it. And It Was Good.

I’m not quite sure how good yet — it usually takes a few days for the buzz to wear off for movies like this. But it was definitely better than Episode I (by far), and I think compares reasonably with the first trilogy.

Mr. Lileks has some thoughts on the matter, and I’ll add mine:

– Yoda kicks ass. Most folks knew that going in, but I’m here to tell you — Obi Wan is cool. Anakin can deal it out. But Yoda — Yoda will fuck you up.

– The dialogue wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Only one line really made me wince with the strong urge to hire Lucas an editor. And to my pleasant surprise, there actually are some wonderfully Han Soloesque one-liners thrown in here and there (an area in which Episode I was sorely lacking).

– Surprises. I hate movies where I know exactly what is going to happen from moment to moment. Lucas keeps things interesting, and while you certainly know that Anakin and Obi Wan aren’t going to get killed by those beasties coming at them right now, the overall plot of the movie is nicely opaque. You genuinely have to think about who’s actually on the right side. (Arguably, a little too opaque — there’s one aspect of how the clones get created that still has me scratching my head).

– Digital projection was pretty neat, but didn’t totally blow me away. We had literally 2nd row seats, which turned out to be great. If there were any cracklies and scratches to be seen, we sure as heck would have seen them. There were zero, naturally. This was nice… but I will confess to being a little skeptical about how long its going to take to get theatre owners to convert, given that, as I understand it, the economics are pretty sketchy.

Anyway, all in all a darned good ride….and one that makes me really look forward to Episode III.

Hey. I think Lucas just regained my faith. Think of that!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled weblog… Blogspot had a nasty patch of downtime this morning, but seems to be back up now. Sorry about that, folks.

From the Dept. of Just Plain Neat

Check out Bookwatch . It’s a fellow who has set up a routine to scan through weblogs (using weblogs.com for his source list) and track when various books are mentioned. So you can look at Snow Crash, for example, and see that TTLB mentioned it (which is how I found the site — I got a referral from them).

Paul Bausch, the fellow who runs it, also has a blog with a few very nice photos of Yosemite that are making me jealous.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden is to Coleen Rowly’s defense from meanies Jeff Jarvis and Matthew Yglesias :

“From here it looks like the problem is that the people in charge of our security think pretty much exactly like Jeff Jarvis and Matthew Yglesias–which is to say, like a well-connected East Coast media maven and a smart Harvard undergrad. For people like them, or like Robert Mueller and George Tenet, someone like Coleen Rowley is and always will be the sort of person you ignore…Jarvis and Yglesias are good guys, but (wittingly or unwittingly, I can’t quite tell) they’re offering a window into exactly why we’re where we are. “

Well said. I listened to a bit (only a bit) of her testimony and I was frankly charmed. She seemed like a very practical, down-to-earth professional who knew her job and was patiently trying to explain it to folks who didn’t. And the Fargo accent works for me, unlike for Mr. Jarvis.

I haven’t examined her full testimony, but the parts I did hear were pretty straightforward: notably, the section where she testified that the FBI’s search engine only works on single words, so you can search on “aviation” but not on “aviation schools”. I think there’s quite a legitimate question to ask why it has taken this long for somebody to testify to Congress about that basic a failing, but you can’t fault Ms. Rowley for that, and she seemed to do a fine job of it to me…

has an interesting referral to a Village Voice piece with statistics on Israeli and Palestinian casualties over the past few years. It says volumes about those doing the killing on each side; funny how actual facts can do that sometimes.

Did you think there could never possibly be an upside to a nuclear war between India and Pakistan?

again.

Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.

First liberals — and now Christians. Seems like TTLB is becoming a haven for… well I don’t know what, but certainly not what I thought it would be.

Dean, the nice fellow over at Your Church Website, asked politely for a link, so I figured I’d oblige, as his page is (probably) unique and is at least out-of-the-ordinary for a non-practicing agnostic like me to be linking to. And I like to keep people guessing.

While I strongly suspect Dean and I might have some amusing and/or infuriating theological and philosophical debates were we to meet in person (said debates preferably to be served with a decent wine), I think I can endorse his — dare I say holy? — mission to bring good web design to Christian pages. If for no other reason, than at least from a clean-up-the-virtual-environment kinda perspective.

Hearkin unto his mission statement:

“Yes, I know most church sites are developed and maintained by volunteers. However, this doesn’t mean they have to look or feel cheap, cheezy and/or down right stupid. This website is here to ‘preach good design … to correct, rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction’ on how to design church and para-church websites that are effective, fast-loading, informative, edifying and hopefully a bit fun. To do this will mean critiquing various sites in hopes of removing the splinters so we can view our sites in a new, more ‘prophet-able’ way.”

Yeeech. I was with him until that prophet-able thing. Didn’t Moses say anything about bad puns? Should be at least venal, IMHO.

Anyway, if you are looking to exorcise the demons of painfully bad design from your most holy pages, then head on over to Heal Your Church Website.

And while you’re there, don’t forget to put in a good word for the Bear. ‘Cause, you know, Pascal had a pretty good point…

Aha! Suman over at Kolkata Libertarian finally responded to the article I mentioned last week regarding India’s detailed plans for a limited war against Pakistan. After hearing about the plan last week, it sounded pretty realistic, but I wanted to hear some analysis from somebody who knows better than I. Having read Suman’s assessment, I’m convinced: Barring some unforseen and bizarre turn of events, this is what is going to happen. It just makes too much sense, from the twisted logic of the region, not to.

Suman’s money quote:

“A sense of the dramatic plays very well in the subcontinental psyche. Furious and explosive exchanges across a relatively stagnant front-line provide for much drama, but make little tactical sense in this age of modern warfare. Keep in mind, however, that the goals of this war are very different from traditional wars of aggression and defense. It’s not how much land the armies can grab, it’s how well they can soothe the jingiosm of the people back home without crippling themselves in the process. “

Whether this little adventure stays the nice, tidy limited conflict that India has planned is another question entirely.

PS – Incidentally, if my implicit recommendation wasn’t clear enough, here’s an explicit one: you should be reading Sumit if you have any interest at all in the India-Pakistan mess. And if you don’t have any interest in what may turn into a nuclear war, well then there’s just no helping you.

(via The Corner).

Dan over at Effect wrote in with some additional info on the item I posted yesterday regarding al Qaeda making contact with Islamist Kurds:

“The Ansar al-Islam connection was discussed in some detail as a small part of the Jeffrey Goldberg article on the gas attacks in Halabja, which is probably where the CSM guy is working from: [link]

This isn’t really a *shocking* revelation, not if you’ve been keeping up with all the little nodes like Fred at Rantburg [link]. And frankly, just about every little “cell” of unemployed hookah-smokers has had *some* contact with *somebody* that you can parse as an al Qaeda connection.

This is really just another example of how they glom onto every little flowering of conflict, or each flowering gravitates toward the al Qaeda blob (see Tim Blair). And how Saddam will cynically ally with anyone in order to fuck with his enemies. As a casus belli it’s pretty weak.”

Well, I’m not suggesting it’s cause to immediately freak out: I agree with Dan that it is not surprising that al Qaeda is attempting to slime their way into any possible conflict area. But the Kurds strike me as a particularly dangerous group to allow to fall into the Islamist orbit. They’ve been fighting for their own homeland for ages, and have already been screwed over by the United States at least once in recent memory (when they rose up against Saddam in the early 90’s at end of the Gulf War, and got squashed, mistakenly assuming that we were actually going to help them).

Miraculously, though, my understanding is that the main groups of Iraqi Kurds still are pretty positive towards the United States (even if they will be somewhat more cautious trusting us the next time around). And so I think a group like Ansar al-Islam bears close scrutiny. If “Kurdistan” (i.e., Northern Iraq those pieces of Turkey, Iran & Syria that the Kurds claim) were to go Islamofascist (not likely, but certainly conceivable ), that would certainly give al Qaeda another very nice base of operations.

And I think we’d all agree that would, well, suck.

My Minnesotan friend tips me off that today’s edition of Tense from Minnesota Public Radio is about weblogs. They don’t have the audio up their site yet, but if you get the actual primitive old electromagnetic waves flowing over you, catch it on air. I’ll post a link when the web audio shows up.

Double Hmph. I noticed a few days back that Pundit has rather kindly given me a link on his blogroll (thanks!). But I’m ambivalent about my classification: I’m under “Comedies”, grouped with the likes of “The Onion”.

So I guess I’m funny sometimes. Or at least I try. But “Comedies”, you know; it’s a bit limiting. I do try to do some serious stuff around here. (And btw, I’m working on a major new piece, kinda similar to Back in the Day, which hasn’t got a funny word in it. Maybe you’ll see it soon).

But I shouldn’t whine unless I’m going to propose a solution (see, my management consulting background is good for something!). So let’s see what we can do here. Martin likes to go with the whole movie-genre thing on his links, but I really don’t think any of his existing ones fit. So let’s brainstorm.

Rock Opera?

Nah. I’m not deaf dumb or blind, and I sure don’t play a mean pinball.

Tear-Jerker ?

My blighted prose may make you cry, but I don’t want to brag about it.

Western ?

I am in California, but that’s probably beside the point.

Teen Sex Comedy ?

You must be thinking of someone else.

Now when I think about it, I’ve always thought the whole “fu” thing was kinda cool — the moniker you hear flung around Ain’t-It-Cool-News for martial arts flicks. You know, Kung Fu, which led to Wire Fu, which led to Matrix Fu. So why not … you guessed it…

Pundit Fu!

I like it. So what do I do here, start a write-in campaign to badger Martin? That probably wouldn’t be very nice. Is there a form to fill out? Some kind of test? Inquiring minds wanting to know and all that…

Hmph. The Force is strong in Jedi Reynolds tonight… Instamention is driving lots of folks my way. Who would have thought so many people would be interested in listening to the Left ?

Scott Peterson, a reporter and photographer for the Science Monitor, was on Fresh Air today discussing his reporting in the Middle East.

Peterson’s most interesting information is that apparently there is a splinter group of Iraqi Kurds called Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq who have adopted a militant Islamic position and have made contact with Al Queda. Even more interesting is that Peterson reports that this group is being funded and supported in part by Saddam himself, in an effort to counterbalance the main Kurdish opposion groups and generally destablize the north. Of the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan — the group from which Ansar al-Islam evolved — he said the following:

“I did speak to sources in Northern Iraq during my recent visit in which they described how Al Qaeda members had worked very hard to try and recruit some people from this organization and try and bring them onto there ideological wavelength. They apparently were successful in doing that. And also, I spoke to people too who described that there had been a lot of support for this group from Saddam Hussein in Baghdad: his purpose was to find any means possible to help destabilize the situation in Northern Iraq, and he felt that this was a worthwhile tool for that.”

I unfortunately can’t seem to locate any particular piece on the CSM website corresponding to this story, so you’ll just have to listen to the RealAudio — the discussion of the Kurds is at the very beginning of the interview. If anyone finds a link, send it to me.

Hmmm. I’m being nice today, but I just don’t know what to make of WarBloggerWatch’s annotation of a Power post in which he extols the virtues of collaborative blogs.

They’ve annotated his quoted words with odd images, including this shot of Nazi swastikas.

Now I’m not in N.Z.Bear-The-Insult-Pundit mode today, so I’m going to remain polite here. But could someone please explain to me just how I’m supposed to interpret this charming little link? It’s been a while since I’ve actually seen Godwin’s Law in action — most folks have smartened up that stuff like that only makes you look foolish. So surely there’s some wise message buried in WBW’s annotation that I’m just missing…. right….?

anyone think I’m closed-minded, let me state it clearly: TTLB is a forum for all opinions.

All opinions, as used in that sentence, are defined as:

1) My opinions

2) Opinions of people I think are intelligent or are at least old friends of mine

A slight revision on the Webster’s standard definition of “all”, I grant you, but I make the rules around here, as I think I’ve mentioned.

With that firmly established, I present to you an opinion that falls in Category #2, from someone who wishes to remain anonymous — let’s just call her L.

L, who is both intelligent and an old friend, put up with me during my high school days and that should at least earn her one free soapbox here at TTLB. She is, in addition, a card-caryin’, tree-huggin’, Democratic-votin’ flaming-and-proud-of-it liberal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Er, wait a minute, maybe there — well, nevermind.

Anyway, L chastised me severely for the original Creative Dream Team posts, pointing out (accurately) that it was a fairly impressive list of Old White Guys. Why no chicks? (Ok, she didn’t use the word “chicks”; I think she said “dames” or “broads”). All are welcome, I responded, but nobody nominated any. So I challenged her to throw her fave’s into the fray.

Well, weeks passed, and I finally goaded her into providing a brief blurb, at least, for her nomination for a wise lady we should pay attention to: Molly Ivins. L writes as follows:

“Looking for left-leaning comments? Then, please, read the latest from Molly Ivins, one of the best and most straightforward commentators from the left/centrist political spectrum. Her latest article about the Administration’s refusal to enact any reforms to diminish the effect of global warming are on target. At least the Bushies acknowledge that humans cause global warming.”

Well, there you have it! Commence link following, or at least commence standard blogospheric conservative Ivins bashing. As always, comments that sufficiently amuse will get posted… but be nice! L’s an old friend, as I said, and anyone caught being mean to her will anger the bear.

PS – With this, I think TTLB has now completed its ideological loop-de-loop round to the liberal side of the world. I better start linking to The Corner again quick before people start getting ideas…

Hmmm. I am attempting to put up a little poll widget (see left) but it doesn’t seem to be working. Anyone with suggestions, let me know…

-NZB

More linking to people who don’t need it

If you’re interested in the latest census data that came out yesterday, but can’t stomach slogging through a tedius Times or Post piece, go read assessment today. He gives you the goods, and although it doesn’t quite reach the time-saving level of a SeriesSkipper^TM, it’ll save you at least a few minutes of tedium.

Lefty Blog Roundup

I’ve received quite a few emails from folks suggesting lefty / liberal blogs that might be of interest. I have to confess that thus far, I’ve yet to find one that has struck me with complete clarity and brilliance that I feel comfortable annointing as The Chosen Leftie. But there sure is some interesting stuff out there, so rather than inflict my prejudices on you, I decided to at least do a roundup of everything I’ve received, and let readers browse as they wish. This list is pretty inclusive of what I received; I only dropped a few that I thought were really lame or were already popular enough to not need the attention. (And I’m not relisting those that I did full posts on; scroll down for those…)

I’m attempting to behave myself today, and maybe go 24 hours without insulting anybody, so I’m going to restrict my comments to honest-but-polite assessments. If you seek snarkiness, look not here.

The list:

Liberal – Another liberal warblogger, and a good one at that. Check out his takedown of a fellow critical of the SFSU blogburst effort, in particular.

Eschaton Sometimes heavy on the insult-tactics, but also sometimes pretty darned sharp.

Charlie Stross – Cthulhu plush toys and links to squirrel fishing photos. Not sure about his politics, but how bad could it be? And he’s a SF-writing Scot, so there’s two extra points. (Hey Charlie, go ask MacLeod why he hasn’t responded to my email, would ya? Thanks.)

Cogent Provocateur – Hmmm. Interesting, but here’s a quote: “Terrorism is not a strategic threat to the US. It wasn’t on September 10, it wasn’t on September 11, and it isn’t today. Terrorists can harass us, they hurt us, they can cost us lives and fortunes, but they can’t knock us over or turn us around.” Well, yes — sort of. There is one low-probability scenario that could lead to the actual destruction of the U.S., and that’s a well-executed bioterrorism attack, but in my view that’s pretty unlikely. And barring that possibility, I can’t see anything else the terrorists can throw at us that would lead to our “defeat” in any real sense of the word (no, not even a nuke attack). However, I’d quibble that just because they are highly unlikely to defeat us, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t a strategic threat. They can still do us great damage, and I think our “strategic interest” should clearly be defined to include preventing great damage, not just preventing total defeat. (Bottom line: blogged something I felt the urge to respond to, so that must be a good sign… see for yourself).

Demosthenes/Hegemon – Straightforward lefty commentary with a particular focus on refuting the CW of the libertarian/conservative blogosphere; insults light to nonexistent.

Dr. Menlo – Let’s put it this way: three of the images prominently displayed on his page are of Edgar Allen Poe, Lenny Bruce, and an automatic weapon that looks to my untrained eyes to be an M-16. I have no idea what that means, but go see for yourself.

Ethel the Blog – Quotes Harlan on the top of his page, so how bad could it be? Also, much linkage and quotage from interesting sources: check out Umberto Eco on Ur-Fascism

The Hauser Report – I think this one is a bit better known, but it wasn’t to me, so here it is. News media link & commentary from a “politically obsessed, self-righteous, fanatically liberal law student”

Jason Rylander – Sharp guy. And he points us to an absolute must-read essay by, of all people, E.B. White on New York City, which is simply chilling in its prophecy.

Public Nuisance – Pleasantly high intelligence/insults ratio (might even be dividing by zero, there). Most recent post is a critique of MWO-Watch, which makes it a weblog commentary on a weblog devoted to monitoring the activities of a weblog devoted to monitoring the activities of the mainstream media. It’s a meta, meta world.

The Serenity– A lot of well-intentioned stuff here that I don’t agree with, but zero on the obnoxious meter and high points for good intentions, so go judge for yourself.

The Stationmaster – I’ll just stick with the self-assessment he emailed me: “I’m a revolutionary communist. Maoist even. That hard enough for you?” Yipes. Uh, yeah.

The Poor Man – Just damned funny. A must read for the chuckles, at the very least.

WarBloggerWatch – – I approve of the concept here, really I do (not that I suspect they care). I mean, it would be a bit hypocritical of the warblogger community to object to someone attempting to fact-check their asses, right? (That “their” should probably be “our”, strictly speaking). As for the execution: well, a bit heavy on the insults and light on the well-reasoned analysis for my tastes, but they do hit some good points at times. Judge for yourself.

War Liberal – Smart stuff, but most folks know that. Almost didn’t make the list because I don’t think Mac qualifies as “small”, but oh well.

Welcome to the Sideshow – – Intelligent stuff, even if she (he?) does say some slightly mean things about my fave Christopher Hitchens (not entirely undeserved things, for the record). Most notable page factoid: the three “resources” listed on the right navbar are the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Bible.

Wisse Words – Gets points if for no other reason than drawing my attention to a Nation article on criminal charges being considered against a U.S. official in the 1973 Chilean coup — demonstrating that sometimes, the left is indeed right.

The Beeb has story on the Internet in China.

This is a bit of an “evergreen” piece — it seems like every year somebody does a story on how the Internet is changing China, but how the government is still cracking down on freedom of expression. But I mention it because it brought two questions to my mind:

1) Are there any bloggers in China? How about political ones?

2) If there are, would I be doing them a (potentially life-affecting) disservice if I actually did draw attention to them?

The second question is certainly not one I’m used to asking myself before linking to blogs… attention = life in the blogosphere, right? But in the light of China’s attitudes, it is one that I and anybody else thinking of mentioning such blogs must consider, in good conscience. And it’s not just China, of course: I’d love to hear from bloggers in other not-so-democratic states. (In particular, I would be very very interested in hearing from anybody in Iran — even if you’re not a blogger, and even if you just want to say ‘hi’ and don’t want any public attention).

Anyway, given that line of thought, I guess we have a new policy here at TTLB: I only link to bloggers in totalitarian states by request only. And no, the EU doesn’t count.